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The Top 10 Stories of November 5, 2012

Quote of the day.“Our election system has probably never been under as much strain as it is right now — anything that can go wrong, probably will go wrong.” Victoria Bassetti, former Senate Judiciary Committee counsel and the author of the new book, Electoral Dysfunction: A Survival Manual for American Voters, on the likelihood of a “perfect storm” of election day problems.(NBC News)

1.President Obama and Mitt Romney begin final push toward Election Day. And now it is closing time. On Monday, in the final hours of their 17-month, nearly $3 billion marathon, the two candidates and their running mates are scheduled to hold 14 events across eight states. (Washington Post)

2. Tight presidential race may come down to knocking on doors.After billions of dollars spent, more than a million advertisements aired and hundreds of thousands of new voters registered in key states, this is how close elections are won: volunteers amped up on too much coffee and too little sleep, trudging from door to door, desperately seeking one last voter. (Los Angeles Times)

3. As candidates make final pleas, legal battles begin.President Obama and Mitt Romney hunted for last-minute support on Sunday in a frenetic sprint across battleground states, even as their parties faced off in the first of what could be a growing number of legal disputes over presidential ballots and how they are counted. (New York Times)

4. Housing nightmare looms in wake of storm.New York City officials said on Sunday that they faced the daunting challenge of finding homes for as many as 40,000 people who were left homeless after the devastation of last week’s storm, a situation that the city’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, compared to New Orleans’s after Hurricane Katrina. (New York Times)

5. U.S. fiscal cliff, Europe''s debt woes worry G20.Leading world economies pressed the United States on Sunday to act decisively to avert a rush of spending cuts and tax hikes, warning that the so-called fiscal cliff is the biggest short-term threat to global growth. (Reuters)

6. Coptic Church chooses Pope who rejects political role.A blindfolded 6-year-old reached into a glass bowl on Sunday to pick the first new Coptic pope in more than 40 years, a patriarch who promises a new era of integration for Egypt’s Christian minority as it grapples with a wave of sectarian violence, new Islamist domination of politics, and internal pressures for reform. (New York Times)

7. Haiti fears food crisis in Hurricane Sandy''s aftermath.On Sunday, Haiti’s government reiterated its appeal the international community for emergency humanitarian aid to deal with Sandy’s disaster. Five days earlier, the government declared an island-wide state of emergency, initially assessing losses to livestock, crops and infrastructure from Sandy at $104 million. (Miami Herald/McClatchy)

8. Deadly clashes in Syria as opposition meets. Syrian rebels are battling government troops in Damascus and second city Aleppo, while the opposition holds makeover talks in Qatar and diplomatic efforts to end the violence have ended without result. (Al Jazeera)

9. China prepares for power handover.Two days after the U.S. goes to the polls, the world''s second-largest economy — and a fifth of its population — will see the beginning of the power shift from Hu Jintao and his peers to younger leaders under Xi Jinping. (Guardian)

10. Spring snow pack in the Arctic disappearing fast.The spring snow pack in the Arctic is disappearing at a much faster rate than anticipated even by climate change models, says a new study by Environment Canada researchers. (Toronto Globe & Mail)

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